COGNITIVE BEHAVIOURAL THERAPY (CBT)

CBT tackles problems by helping make sense of how thoughts, behaviour and feelings are interconnected, often trapping you in a negative spiral. CBT can help you change what you think (‘Cognitive’) and what you do (‘Behaviour’). These changes can help you feel better.

Features of CBT are:

● A focus on managing current ‘here and now’ problems rather than attempting to resolve past issues

● You work with your therapist to find practical ways to improve your state of mind on a daily basis. This will usually include tasks to carry out between sessions to try out different ways of thinking and behaving

● You learn portable skills and techniques that you can apply to future problems

CBT has been shown to be effective in treating many conditions from depression and anxiety disorders (including panic attacks, post – traumatic stress disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder and phobias) to chronic fatigue and eating disorders. The number of sessions you need will depend on your individual problems and objectives. Therapy usually lasts six weeks to six months.

At LCC we appreciate that finding the right therapist is complex. There are many types of therapy, and therapists often have quite different kinds of approaches or styles. For those who don’t know much about psychotherapy, this can be very confusing.

Below is a brief outline of some of the main forms of therapy to help you in your search. Reading through them might make you think about which makes most sense to you. When you talk to a therapist you can ask about which approach they use to see if you feel this will be right for you. Please Get in Touch for more information>>

This kind of therapy is focused on the client talking and the therapist listening and concentrating on understanding how the client is feeling: seeing things through their eyes.

The idea is that we all know what is best for ourselves but as we get older that knowledge is undermined by our experience in life. Having a space and time to talk about this with a therapist can help you to feel safe enough to find out what is best for you and what you want from life.

PSYCHODYNAMIC THERAPY (SOMETIMES CALLED PSYCHOANALYTIC THERAPY)

Like Person-Centred Therapy, Psychodynamic Therapy is largely based on the client talking and the therapist listening and encouraging. Psychodynamic therapists believe that many of the troubles we experience are because we hide things from ourselves. The aim of therapy is to help clients be more open with themselves about these things.

Psychodynamic therapists help clients to explore their feelings and think about what causes them. They may also draw links between how a client is in therapy, how they are in the rest of their life, and how things were for them in childhood.

EXISTENTIAL THERAPY (SOMETIMES CALLED PHENOMENOLOGICAL THERAPY)

This kind of therapy generally believes that a lot of people’s problems are because we get stuck in certain ways of seeing things. Probably these ways were useful at one point in time, but they are not so useful now. Existential Therapy helps people to challenge themselves and explore their options.

Like Person-Centred Therapy, Existential Therapy believes that people can help themselves. The therapist spends a lot of time listening to the client and trying to see the world through their eyes. Like Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, it challenges unhelpful ways of thinking. But Existential Therapy believes that there are always good and sensible reasons for the ways that we are thinking and behaving, they just are no longer helpful to us in our present life.

An existential therapist believes that all humans have difficult times – including the therapist! It is normal to struggle and useful to listen to the difficult feelings and find out what they have to tell us.

SYSTEMIC THERAPY (SOMETIMES CALLED FAMILY THERAPY)

Systemic therapy looks at people as part of a relationship, family, or network. Problems are seen as part of the whole ‘system’. In relationship work couples often see a problem as one person’s ‘fault’. A Systemic Therapist would see it as something that happens between them.

For example a couple might blame each other over domestic chores. One person might complain that the other never tidies up, whilst the other might complain that their partner is always nagging. A Systemic Therapist would help them see the dynamic between the two of them, where the first person feels unappreciated when their partner leaves them to do all the housework, and the other person feels useless when their partner complains. It is no one person’s ‘fault’, but a dynamic between the couple.

INTEGRATIVE THERAPY

Integrative therapists recognise that clients are individuals, with different and complex relationship and family histories who may also have individual relationship needs in the present.

What works and supports one client or couple, may not work for another. Integrative therapists are skilled at drawing on different schools and models of psychotherapy in an integrated and research-based manner, to find effective ways of working with human behaviour, whilst respecting the client’s autonomy. They also tend to work in a more holistic framework attending to the body, mind and spirit, as well as the environment in which the person lives in.

APPROACHES OTHER THAN TALKING THERAPY

It is important to say that ‘talking therapy’ is not the only way of addressing psychological difficulties.

There are all kinds of other therapies that you might find useful which aren’t based around talking: for example hypnotherapy, art therapy, drama therapy and nature therapy. There are also therapy groups where people with similar issues help each other to deal with them.

There are many self-help books about psychological difficulties, which you can read, and in fact many people do this in combination with therapy.

Some people find writing about their issues useful and keep journals, again you may be asked to try this as part of the therapeutic process.

The important thing is to find a therapy and therapist that works for you. Here at LCC it is our priority to make sure that each client is matched to the best therapist for them in order to facilitate their personal therapy journey.

ENERGY PSYCHOLOGY

Energy Psychology attends to the connection between the mind and the body and specifically considers the embodied psyche. It acknowledges the body as an energy system and views physical and psychological distress as disruptions in that energy system. The mind/body link is clearly established in all psychotherapeutic approaches. We know that if we think of something distressing we can feel distressed. Energy psychology says that whatever is in the mind is encoded in the body. Energy Psychology offers simple procedures to locate and release these codes or disruptions.

COUPLES COUNSELLING

Couples counselling is a specialist type of counselling that works with the problems that arise in adult sexual or intimate relationships. Many relationships suffer stress and pressure from external factors and these can affect the quality of the relationship.

A couples therapist works with you to help you understand the dynamics at play and to make changes to improve your communication and relationship.